Critics, readers vote Boss Bagel best bagels in S.A.

Boss Bagel's menu features a wide range of bagels and bagel sandwiches for both breakfast and lunch. It’s located in the Sunset Ridge shopping center at 6458 N. New Braunfels Ave.

Photo: Paul Stephen /San Antonio Express-News

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Boss Bagel owner Brannon Soileau and his wife are graduates of the Culinary Institute of America, and he taught at the New York and San Antonio campuses for a decade.

Photo: Paul Stephen /San Antonio Express-News

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Boss Bagel features a number of dessertlike sweet schmears.

Photo: Paul Stephen / San Antonio Express-News

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Employees fill bins of bagels at Boss Bagel.

Photo: Courtesy Brannon Soileau

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Boss Bagel serves handmade bagels boiled and then baked in a wood-fired oven.

Photo: Paul Stephen /San Antonio Express-News

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Boss Bagel offers a wide range of schmears, both sweet and savory. The eatery also has schmears made with tofu and hummus.

Photo: Paul Stephen /San Antonio Express-News

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Bagels are baked on cedar planks at Boss Bagel. The method is necessary not for flavor purposes but to keep the bagels from sticking to the oven’s stone.

Photo: Paul Stephen /San Antonio Express-News

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Boss Bagel is located at 6458 N. New Braunfels Ave., in the Sunset Ridge shopping center.

Photo: Paul Stephen /San Antonio Express-News

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Making the homemade bagels is a lengthy process. The dough is made a day prior and then hand-formed into traditional circular shapes. They’re then boiled, when they double in size, and are baked in aMaking the homemade bagels is a lengthy process. The dough is made a day prior and then hand-formed into traditional circular shapes. They’re then boiled, when they double in size, and are baked in a wood-fired oven at Boss Bagel.

Photo: Paul Stephen / San Antonio Express-News

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Boss Bagel makes coffee with a lever-pull espresso machine.

Photo: Paul Stephen / San Antonio Express-News

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Boss Bagel owner Brannon Soileau wipes down cedar planks.

Photo: Paul Stephen /San Antonio Express-News

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Boss Bagel is located at 6458 N. New Braunfels Ave.

Brannon Soileau sports neither a yarmulke nor a purple top hat, but his Boss Bagel shop borrows from the Old World style of Jewish bagel makers and the colorful culinary creativity of Willy Wonka.

The shop, which celebrates its first anniversary in August, won both Readers’ Choice and Critics’ Choice for best bagel in San Antonio.

At the breakfast-and-lunch spot he co-owns with his wife in the Sunset Ridge shopping centercustomers first see the bagels being made. Dough is cut, hand-rolled, boiled in a 60-gallon pot, and then baked in a wood-fired oven, a process that only takes place anymore in a half-dozen U.S. bagel shops in the U.S., Soileau said.

At the back of the eatery customers order from a broad menu with nearly 30 homemade schmears.

“I want it to be Old World — I want to showcase the Old World so that when you come in, you see, wow, man, look at that oven. I want them to go back in time on this side (with the oven), and then I want them to come over here, and this is the chef in me right here, the eclectic, the creative,” he said. “It’s like Old World meets Willy Wonka right here.”

The Soileaus jest that there’s not much competition in San Antonio, which is part of the reason why they decided to open a bagel shop. Both graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, where he taught for a decadein New York City and San Antonio.

Boss Bagel also has a full espresso bar, brews single-origin coffee and offers hot teas.